The pope spoke with Kate and Gerry McCann as he greeted dignitaries seated in the front row during his weekly general audience in St. Peter's Square.Now that the parents of Madeline McCann have met with the Pope, I'm sure everything will be okay in no time. I mean, if prayer works, and the Pope prays for the safe return of their daughter, then she should be home almost immediately, right?
"He was very kind, very sincere," Kate McCann told a packed news conference later. She said Benedict assured them that he would continue to pray for Madeleine's safe return. Pope meets with parents
I have an incredible amount of sympathy for the McCanns and their nightmarish situation. I can think of nothing more horrible than having your child disappear like this. What saddens me is that while they may take temporary comfort from their meeting with the Pope, it's a false hope and doesn't move them one step closer to finding their lovely daughter.
12 comments:
Maybe they just should have spent the ten bucks on the resort's daycare service.
I think you are missing the point. Whether you believe or not, it's obviously of some comfort to the family to have the pope praying for the child. The fact that it doesn't help in finding the child (from your perspective)is irrelevent unless they decide to stop the police from searching in lieu of prayer. Why does it hurt? So what if it's false hope--people do things that don't have any practical effect all the time. It makes them feel better and I think there is some value there. Face it, whether or not you like it, many people find comfort in religion and to ridicule them for taking what solace they can seems to me a bit uncharitable. You are letting your ideology get in the way of your empathy for these poor parents.
Marc, my point is to mock the idea that prayer works. If it did, this would be a prime example of when it should. I'm not so much mocking the parents for finding solace.
What does it hurt? It provides false hope. That's a hurt. They give credence to this ridiculous institution, that's a hurt. Seeing the Pope distracts and delays them from dealing with the reality of the situation. If they were sacrificing a goat to Cthulhu it would be a little more obvious that they're wasting their time and be just as useful.
I understand your point, but what you are saying offers no hope at all. That's why religion exists--many people need the solace of religion to get through life. You and I don't, but I don't blame people who do. I realize your point is directed against religious institutions, specifically the Church, but they serve a purpose--not one that you agree with, but still something that people need.
If you are just asking me, will the pope praying help find the child, I would say no. But he is comforting these people, whether or not falsely. I think that means something.
You could just as easily say, why follow sports teams? It just distracts you from your problems and doesn't offer any solutions. (I realize you might actually agree with this point.) The point is, religious institutions offer something that many people consider of value.
Yeah, that sports team analogy pretty much falls flat with me.
:-)
To not have religion is not to be bereft of hope. You can have hope without religion. I understand the role of the "comfort" of religion. But it's just a baby blanket and sucking a thumb. I think that to grow as human beings, we need to ditch that kind of nonsense and deal with reality, however painful.
Your assumption is that unless we "grow" as human beings, we won't progress. But, in a lot of cases, religion has helped humans grow. Religion was one of the driving forces behind abolitionism and the civil rights movement. Obviously, you can point to lots of examples the other way, but if you take away religion without something to replace it (ie, something more comforting than science), it's not clear to me that the world would necessarily be better off. (Obviously, we would be better off if you could eliminate the radical, extremist religious elements.)
The point is, while you know I agree with you generally on the substance of religion, I am uncomfortable with the notion that we need to get people to "deal with reality" on our terms rather than their own. I deal with reality by sitting in front of a TV watching baseball, you deal with it by gaming. I don't see that much difference.
And you pooh-pooh bling faith. But we all have blind faith to some degree in something. If you believe in "progress" that is often a victory of faith over evidence. I could just as easily say the world is doomed and on the way to destruction.
Our dealing with reality by sports and gaming doesn't DENY reality. It's just for stress relief (i.e. fun). In most cases, religion is a direct denial of reality.
What do I have blind faith in?
Religious belief currently inhibits medical progress (e.g. stem cells), social justice (e.g. gay marriage), and many fundamental liberties Americans are supposed to enjoy.
Science is not a replacement for anything; it's a method for investigating the world. Saying that we need to replace religion with something is like saying "People need to believe that the world is flat. You can't just take that away." Of course you can. With the truth.
If anything, we need to replace religion with simple consideration and compassion for other human beings. It's that simple. The rest is mere superstition.
You keep conflating particular religious beliefs (ie, fundamentalist Christianity and, I assume, radical Islam) with religious belief in general to support your view that religious belief is necessarily repressive and inhibits progress. But that’s like saying that politics is repressive because some political systems are totalitarian. There are plenty of people who believe in religion and have liberal, progressive views–at least I know a lot. I think it’s very unfair to conflate religion in general with the most regressive forms of it and use that as a reason why no one should believe. If you look at the history of social reform movements, as I pointed out earlier, such as abolitionism, civil rights, poverty relief and, for that matter, pacifism, they all have roots to some degree or another in religion. Not all religious people follow James Dobson and not all religions require right-wing dogma.
Now, personally, I am just as uncomfortable with using religion to support liberal political views as I am conservative ones. I find liberal clerics to be just as self-righteous and insufferable in many cases as conservative ones. But that’s a lot different than saying that religious belief, itself, inhibits human progress. That’s just too simplistic a statement. You imply that religious belief is diametrically opposed to consideration and compassion, but again, that statement is far too broad. And there are plenty of secularists that couldn’t care less about other humans.
I share Sam Harris's take on religious moderates, they empower the religious right by letting them speak for the religion. At least the fundamentalists have the courage of their (bizarre and medieval) convictions.
I believe that those religious liberals who do good in the name of religion would continue to do good without religion. They give credit to the religion but it's not really religion that drives them, it's their own personal morality (which is a completely separate thing).
The fact is, liberals, conservatives, secularists and fundamentalists would likely hold the same positions and act the same way with or without religion. Without religion, however, they'd be forced to come up with real reasons for their positions rather than just say "The Bible (Koran, Talmud, etc.)/God tells me what position to take." And this process might cause some of them to actually evaluate their positions rationally rather than hide unthinking behind rigid religious dogma.
It's like political radicals that hate liberals because they "empower" the system. And I don't understand what you are saying--should religious moderates speak out against the nuts or should they simply disavow their religious beliefs?
The issue of what drives people to think a certain is sort of a chicken and egg argument but if people feel an obligation based on their religion, I don't really see how you can argue that isn't really what drives them. Does that mean we don't really need laws against murder, for example, because people that don't murder wouldn't do it anyway?
It seems to me what you are really saying is that everyone should see the world as you and I do. But they don't. And I don't have a problem with that. For one thing, I don't share your belief in inevitable human progress. You assume that if people simply thought the right way about the world (ie, your way), mankind would inevitably move toward enlightenment. I don't share that optimism; I think the world is always just ready to regress toward barbarism and you need institutions and tradition to maintain the veneer of civilization. Religion is one of those institutions that, like politics, however imperfectly, helps maintain people's sense of place in the universe. Take that away and I think you are playing with fire.
Religious moderates should speak out against the nuts.
Obviously, we disagree because you're a pessimist and I'm an optimist! :-)
Given the changes for the better that we've seen in our own lifetimes, I don't see how you can conclude that we're ready to regress towards barbarism. Things have gotten worse over the past 6 years, but the general trend is still positive.
And in any event, what is leading this trend towards barbarism? Religious fundamentalism, plain and simple.
Yes, I acknowledge that I am a pessimist. But if your argument is that religious moderates should speak out against the nuts, I agree with you. There, I knew there would be something we would agree on!
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